[Ellie_jo]

I think I have had emotional issues for my whole life, but it did not become apparent until a few years ago. I saw a therapist before I was ever diagnosed, but even then, when I had only a suspicion that there was something deeply wrong, I tended to befriend people with similar experiences. Maybe it makes us magnetic, or maybe we just bring it out of each other in a way that other people don't.

About a year ago I was a total zombie: medicated to the point of feeling nothing and sleeping basically never. I hated everything. I was wasting time, money, and energy just banging my head up against a wall seeing psychiatrist and therapist and pharmacist and the whole dance that goes along with it. So I scrapped all my meds and peaced out. You can imagine how that went.

I had a confusing few months, and eventually found myself in a predicament. I basically had two options: kill myself or live. I was up enough at that point that I decided to give living the benefit of the doubt. But I was sick of this going back and forth and needed to do something that would take certain options away from me. The solution: a puppy.

And that is where the story gets interesting. It became painfully obvious after a few weeks that this was no ordinary pup. She never slept, never stopped moving, didn't respond to being yelled at or told no, continued to steal things and bite uncontrollably, and screamed like a hound from hell at all hours. I took her to trainers. Each one offered a different view of what I was doing wrong. "You need to be consistent." "Your corrections need to be doubled." "She needs more exercise." "You can't let her win." In retrospect, it is funny how sure they were that they knew what she was thinking and how to get her to behave, even when she failed miserably to respond to their methods. At the time, though, it was heartbreaking and exhausting and their comments just added to my issues.

I spent months running around non stop just trying to keep up with her. She couldn't learn commands, couldn’t sleep, couldn't be let out of her crate unless she was on a leash. When she had her spay surgery, they sent me home and told me to "keep her calm and let her rest for two weeks." I told them that that wouldn’t work because 1. she's a puppy and 2. she's a particularly crazy puppy. They gave me a rx for a sedative but thought I wouldn’t need it. She needed it. Not only did she need it, but it wasn't enough to slow her down. I fought with the vet for two weeks about it and during that time she injured her incision and needed to go back to the vet. Only after this development and a long phone call with me basically in tears did a vet recommend me to a behaviorist.

A behaviorist is basically a psychiatrist for dogs. In the first 5 minutes of our appointment the behaviorist looked at her and said "this is an extremely anxious dog." She proceeded to explain that my puppy had an anxiety disorder and that all of the things that I had been doing to try to help her had been wasted because she was not a chemically normal dog and so could not learn the way that other dogs could. She told me that medication and different training methods were the solution and that, while my puppy would have this problem forever, that it could likely be managed well. I can't tell you how it felt. I felt huge rocky chunks of stress and guilt break apart and fall off of me. I felt like the I could see the sun for the first time in years. Or ever.

It has been a few months since then and we are still trying to figure out which medications will work best, but the improvement is unreal. What strikes me most about this is how much her struggle mirrors my own. And I wonder what would have happened if she had found her way into the hands of someone that didn't understand anxiety. Every day is hard. So hard. The hardest thing I've ever done. But she is the absolute and only reason I'm still here.

And now that she is doing better, I am forced to look at myself and ask:

Why can't I do the same?

[Confusedinomicon]

I don't have words but animals are best.

My cat has helped me a lot.

((Hugs))

[Nike007]

It's nice of you to have a dog, but I'm sorry about the dog having MI. I feel sad about it, but then again, humans are as animal as dogs, so it's understandable. Maybe when you first got the dog, you secretly saw yourself in the dog and thought you could help it because of personal experience? I am not sure. Anyways, it's probably hard for you to accept an illness in something you thought would help you. Maybe you can work on it together? I'm sorry, I'm probably giving bad advice. I wanted to let you know I read what you wrote and good luck.

[Ellie_jo]

It's something. Idk what exactly. But thanks.

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